But now, his son Jason, a 30-year-old GM diemaker, faces his own buyout opportunity, with much harsher options.

With just six years on the job, he could take a $70,000 lump sum payment if he gives up all claims to pension and retiree health benefits.

The father and son have talked a lot about the wisdom of taking buyouts, and they agree on this: with three young children and a wife, Jason Groot should stay put at the Wyoming metal stamping plant.

"I honestly only took about three minutes to consider it," Jason said.

Although he has a skilled trade, the region's tool and die industry is in tough shape. Even when those shops are hiring, they don't pay as well as GM.

"I'd probably only make about half or a little more, and to start over again for vacations, retirement, all that -- there was too much for it to really be feasible," the younger Groot said.

Single men are more likely to take the money and leave town, he said.

Dave Raczkowski | The Grand Rapids PressPam Collis left General Motors a year ago, and trains to work part time as a school bus driver for Sparta.

Jason Groot and 1,678 co-workers in Wyoming have until May 22 to make a decision, with July 1 as the target date for most departures.

Offers range from $45,000 to $140,000, depending on tenure and age, nearly matching the offers two years ago.

After 34,000 people left in that first round, what insight would those former workers offer those now scratching their heads and punching their calculators?

Only if you can afford it

"If you can do it money-wise, get out of there," advised John Cook, 53. A third-shift millwright for most of his career, Cook commuted from Newaygo to Wyoming.

Although he rushed to sign on for his $35,000 retirement bonus, he found himself second-guessing that move.

"I kept thinking about it, but I finally said, 'Don't overthink this.' If you can do it financially, that's an awful lot of it.

"If you don't have the money, you just can't do it."

Cook is part of a growing legion of former GM workers behind the wheel of a school bus. In Newaygo, where his wife, Mary Jane, teaches kindergarten, Cook is one of five ex-GM employees among the 22 drivers.

"I was the first one, and other guys heard about it through the grapevine," Cook said.

Pam Collis, 53, worked at the plant at 36th Street SW her entire 31-year career, so leaving was not an easy decision.

Her last assignment was wastewater treatment operator, a job she loved. It involved collecting oil off water as it left the plant, by heating it with steam from the boiler, then selling the oil back to the vendor.

"I came home and talked about it with my husband," Collis said of the $35,000 retirement bonus. "It was scary, because you get so secure in that job. You know when you take that (buyout), you're on a fixed income."

She is a volunteer firefighter, a role that brings in $200 in pin money each month. That helps when she forgets a birthday or anniversary and needs a little extra cash.

This winter, one of the snowiest on record, she and her husband stayed home in Sparta rather than take their annual trip to Florida, so he could mend after surgery.

"I got so bored," Collis said. So, like Cook and other recent GM buyouts, she is learning to drive a school bus, a job that will pay $13 an hour during the school year.

The part-time job is fine, Collis said, but she echoes Cook's advice to people mulling the buyout now.

"The big thing you have to think about is, if you're going to have to go out and work full time, don't do it. Stay there and try to get on a budget and save some money," Collis said.

Team approach

While Collis logged her entire career at one plant, Kim and Cheryl Wright have been bounced around.

Both Wrights worked at GM's plant in Coopersville before it was spun off to Delphi Corp.

GM's buyout offer

All 74,000 of GM's employees represented by United Auto Workers, including 1,679 at its Wyoming stamping plant, have until May 22 to sort through these options:

30 or more years of service: $45,000 lump sum payment for factory workers, $62,500 for skilled trades. Workers retain health care and other benefits;

26 to 29 years of service: receive reduced pay until full retirement mark of 30 years, with benefits;

50-year-olds with 10 years: retire early with benefits or lump sum of $140,000 and lose benefits;

Under 50 and more than 10 years: $140,000, no future benefits;

Fewer than 10 years: $70,000, cut all ties.

Then, when Delphi filed for bankruptcy and made the surprising decision to close Coopersville, Kim Wright took the buyout and, in October 2006, Cheryl went to work at the Wyoming plant.

Although her new job required heavy lifting, it also provided a steady income until her husband settled into his next career.

"We both knew we wanted to do something else, knowing the auto industry was going to be pretty shaky," Cheryl Wright said. Her husband signed up for truck-driving school and now is a truck driver.

The change is dramatic.

"It was something to get used to, because we both worked together at the Delphi plant," Wright said. "Now, he's out there driving and is only home two or three days a week.

"We're used to it now, and we're getting by."

For weeks, Wright has been wrestling with her own buyout offer. She is older than 50 and has more than 10 years' service, so she could retire early with the guaranteed pension and health coverage, or take a $140,000 lump sum and cut her ties to the company.

"I've just been driving myself crazy for the last six months, to decide if this was the right thing to do," she said.

Many of her co-workers are in the same boat, she said.

But last week, Wright made up her mind. She will forego the lump sum and instead retire early with benefits. And she intends to open her own business in a storefront in Newaygo.

"I just can't see myself driving a big, old truck," Wright said. "I'm going to do it, and I'm going to succeed." She already has a site rented for her Indian River Tobacco Traders.

As for her husband, now 51, it's his turn to pay the bills.

"He's going to have to support me until this thing makes a go," Wright said.

Will son enjoy good life?

By the time Bill Groot, 56, got the first-round buyout offer, he and his wife, Lisa, already were well along on the path to an early retirement.

He had survived a heart attack at age 50, leading the family to sell its 32-acre home on Lincoln Lake for a lower-maintenance, double-wide trailer in Belmont.

"It was stuff we had been thinking about ahead of time," Groot said. "When the buyout came, it just speeded everything up for us."

Shortly after leaving GM, the couple took the dream trip of their lives: six weeks in Ireland.

"It was really a ball," Bill Groot said. Since then, they have driven a motor home to Florida and stopped in to see friends from the plant.

"People ask me, 'Do you miss it?' I say, 'I don't miss the plant, I miss the people in the plant,'" Groot said.

After the trip to Ireland, he found part-time work with Van's Delivery Service Inc. in Walker, working two days a week. Other days, he golfs, volunteers for local charities, and watches his grandkids.

He values the retirement benefits, but he has a twinge of sadness when he contemplates his son's future at GM.

"It's always been the kids do a little better than mom and dad did. But our kids' generation is going to be the first not able to do better than their parents," Groot said. "That's a scary thought."

Expectations lowered

Jason Groot sees his prospects at GM with less anxiety. After weathering the first two-tier wage package in GM's history, the younger Groot expects more wage-cut demands in future contracts. The long strike at American Axle and Manufacturing Holdings Inc. is just the beginning of that, he said.

The thought of give-backs would enrage his forefathers, Jason Groot said, but he's more optimistic.

"I don't have a lot of years in there, so I'm not used to making that amount of money for the last 20 years," Groot said. "I'm able to flex with them a little bit."

The family constellation is shifting, too. In his father's generation, most families had a single bread-winner with a stay-at-home mom.

"A lot of my generation are two-income families, and they work back and forth," Groot said. His wife is a legal secretary, a job less impacted by ups and downs in the auto industry.

"I'm only projecting 10 to 15 years," Groot said. Others also fret about the plant's future.

"It scares me that things are so bad," John Cook said. "I would like to think it's going to be around for a long time."

Dave Raczkowski | The Grand Rapids PressCheryl Wright sits in her empty storefront at the Morningside Center in Newaygo, where she will open Indian River Tobacco Traders in July. Wright took the buyout and will leave GM by July 1.